As those amongst snooker’s ‘Twitterati’ will no doubt be aware, there has been some debate in recent days on social media as to whether the size of snooker’s main tour should be cut from its current field of 125 players (plus three invitational tour cards), to just 64 as suggested by 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy in his own blog post here.

With a few days now before the Ruhr Open gets underway at the weekend, today I offer a few of my own thoughts on the topic and suggest why personally at least, I am glad that the tour will be remaining as it is…

On Friday 25th September World No.6 snooker star Shaun Murphy visited Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital to present a cheque for £5,100.

Charity patron Shaun is a regular visitor to the hospital, donating £100 every time he makes a break of 100 or more in a competitive match. His latest donation covers the number of centuries that he made during a successful 2014-15 season that saw him land three titles.

A short post this evening to alert those of you not on Twitter to a new blog started by world number 26 and ITV commentator Alan McManus, at which he hopes to shed some light on the professional circuit from a player’s point of view.

Knowing Alan as I do, I have no doubt that it will contain plenty of insight and opinion, so click here to read his opening post and add the site to your bookmarks.

When Michael White trailed 19-year-old Steven Hallworth 4-0 at the first mid-session interval of their World Championship qualifying match back in April, the scoreline was more than enough to raise a few eyebrows, even amongst those of us inside of the snooker bubble.

Though White was able to recover to take a 10-8 victory, Hallworth had acquitted himself well and turning to the 2015/16 season is now looking to do enough to successfully retain his place on tour.

That being the case, I caught up with Steven to reflect upon his rookie professional season, look to the future and more…

An interesting line this afternoon from World Snooker, with the news that the tour card of Chinese youngster Yan Bingtao will now be deferred until the start of the 2016/17 season due to difficulties in obtaining a visa for him to travel to the UK.

With a tour place opened up, the decision has been taken to issue an ‘International Development Main Tour Card’ to Brazil’s Igor Figueiredo, who you may remember was relegated from the tour at the end of last season.

While all eyes at the Crucible were on the World Championship final between Stuart Bingham and Shaun Murphy a week ago, World Snooker also announced via Twitter that Ding Junhui will work with former world champion and renowned coach Terry Griffiths from the start of next season.